474 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



duction from all previous experience, and the inference from all experi- 

 mental work to that date, seemed entirely obvious. But, so far as the 

 writer is aware, this expression of the 'Law of Substance,' thus enun- 

 ciated in August, 1878, is unanticipated. It was then stated as fol- 

 lows:* 



"The facts revealed by the researches of Rumford, Davy and Joule 

 have been grouped and systematically united by Eankine, Thomson, 

 Clausiu's and other scarcely less eminent men and the science of ther- 

 modynamics, which has been thus created, has been applied and put to 

 the proof by Hirn and other distinguished engineers of our own time. 

 Finally, it has now become evident that this last is but another branch 

 of the universal science of energetics, which governs all effective forces 

 in all departments of science. The man is still to be found who is to 

 combine all the facts of this latest and most comprehensive of all 

 sciences into one consistent and symmetrical whole and to illustrate its 



applications in all methods of exhibition of kinetic energy. 



* * * * 



"The grand principle which we are just beginning to indistinctly 

 perceive, and to recognize as underlying every branch of knowledge and 

 as forming the foundation of all positive science, seems, when stated, to 

 be simply an axiom. The Scriptural declaration that the world shall 

 endure until its Maker shall decree its destruction by Omnipotence is but 

 a statement of a principle which is more and more generally admitted 

 as a scientific truth, viz. : 



"The two products of creation, matter and force, and the fruit of 

 their union, energy, are indestructible. 



"The grand underlying basis of all science is found in the principle: 



"All that has been created by infinite power — matter and its at- 

 tribute, force, and all energy — is indestructible by finite power and 

 shall continue to exist, so long as the hand of the Creator is withheld 

 from its destruction." 



"This 'Law of Substance,' as Haeckel proposes to call it, the writer 

 then stated, has "been admitted almost from the time of Lavoisier, so 

 far as it affects matter; it has been admitted as applicable to physical 

 energies since the doctrine of the correlation of forces and of the per- 

 sistence of energy became accepted by men of science and we are grad- 

 ually progressing toward the establishment of a Law of Persistence of all 

 Existence, whether of matter, of force and energy, or of organic vitality, 

 and perhaps even to its extension until it includes intellectual and soul- 

 life." 



*i 



*Proc. A. A. A. S., Twenty-seventh Meeting, at St. Louis, Mo., 1878; Sec. A, 

 Mathematics, Physics and Chemistry; Address of the Vice-President, p. 43. Tide 

 also Thurston's 'Manual of the Steam Engine,' Vol. L, 1st Ed., 1891, Chap. III., 

 p. 241. 



